Quite a day today...

We had a great morning at First Landing state park, waking to a lovely view of the bay and the bridge/tunnel out our front window. Clear, sunny, and relatively warm. We had a nice stroll on the beach with the dog. I did take a couple snaps of the site, which I hope to upload to SmugMug soon. Turns out the site was free! It was the last day open for this state park, and the sign at the entrance said a ranger would come and collect fees ($23.10, if we figured it right). The was no fee collection box for the campground -- apparently ranger collection is SOP after hours. We arrived sometime around 4:30 yesterday and left close to noon today, yet no ranger appeared to collect. We did see one drive by sometime early in the morning, but he or she did not stop. I'm guessing that on the last day of the season, will all of two sites occupied, they just could not be bothered.

After driving south through the touristy and swanky parts of Virginia Beach, we headed for the Currituck Sound Ferry at the souther tip of Knotts Island. Slow going on a twisty narrow road. We stopped for lunch at a little dive that had a bunch of police motors out front -- the Virginia Beach motor unit out for a training ride (so I surmised from the lack of saddle bags and the rubber hoses strapped to the crash bars). Of course, all the cops had to check out the bus, and they were suitably impressed by the "garage" with the two motorcycles in it. We chatted with them for about five minutes after lunch, and they went on their merry way, muttering something about having the special ops unit requisition them a bus just like ours.

Twenty minutes later, we arrived at the ferry landing, just in time so see the ferry outbound about 300 yards from the dock. It would be two and a half hours before the ferry returned for another departure. No matter, because the sign at the landing indicated a weight limit of 36,000 pounds, and we're heavier than that. Rather than wait 2.5 hours to possibly be told we could not embark, we turned around and drove the 45 miles back around the bay. Ironically, we had to drive right past the opposite ferry dock. We made the detour in just over an hour, so we were two hours ahead of the game.

Tonight we are in the outer banks, about half way to Cape Hatteras (map). Our plan had been to continue down the outer banks, but we need to be in Raleigh tomorrow night, and there would be two more ferries on that route, plus highway construction. The ferries and construction delays would add four hours to our trip, not to mention the fact that one of the ferries may have weight issues similar to the Currituck ferry. Rather than leaving at oh-dark-thirty just to chance being turned back in Hatteras, we will turn around here tomorrow morning and take a more inland route.

Camped here at the First Landing state park in Virginia, just north of Virginia beach. Today we crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel after a pleasant drive down the length of the DelMarVa peninsula.

The campground here is very nice, and we have a spectacular view of the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay out our front window. However, we could not drive around the campground loop due to low-hanging tree branches. We were incredibly lucky in that we were able to find one site that fit Odyssey by driving the wrong way into the loop. Of course, we had to back up about a quarter mile first -- that's how far we got before the branches got too low.

This link should show where we are:
http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?latlongtype=decimal&latitude=36.91890&longitude=-76.05330

I'm going to try posting our location here in the blog as I update it. The link on our home page takes you to a map of our location, but it only shows the last location from which we updated (via our satellite dish). As soon as we update the map anew, the previous location is lost to oblivion. Until I find a good way to automate this (perhaps with direct map links), I'll just be pasting in the location from the Datastorm site. Here's where we are tonight:

38.60670N 75.06580W

Today we took the ferry from Cape May, NJ to Lewes, DE across Delaware Bay. As far as I know, this is only the second time Odyssey has been on the "high seas," the first being when she was delivered to Houston from Pilsting, Germany. Certainly the first time in her current trim.

Seas were about five or six feet, so there was a bit of a roll to the ferry. I'm not sure if it was the roll, or the drone of the ferry's diesels (much different than Odyssey's), or the strange, unnatural way the gulls seem to fly when viewed from the ship, but the cats were extremely out of sorts, especially George. They did settle down sometime during the 70-minute voyage. I took some photos, which I will try to post on the site sometime soon.

The trip down the Jersey shore from Atlantic City was interesting. We took Ocean Drive (or similar name) the whole way, including widgeting through a bunch of squeaky toll booths on the bridges between spits of land. I have to say that I'm really glad we did this now, and not in the middle of the high season. It was pretty much non-stop vacation rentals the whole 40 miles.

Tonight we are in Delaware Beach State Park. The campground is uninteresting and pricey for a state park, but we are here alone so it is quiet. Tomorrow we tackle the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel.

Now that Odyssey is "finished" and we've been on the road for a couple months, I guess it's time to get motivated to start posting some things to the 'blog. A lot has happened, and it's tempting to try to write it all up and post it as a massive update. That always seems like a daunting task, though, and what I have learned while putting together the web site is that I'll never get anything posted at all if I wait until I can put together a "complete" posting (whatever that is).

I've settled, instead, for keeping to bite-size chunks, and I'll start out in this post with just a quick update on where we are today. As time permits, I'll try to "fill in" some of the earlier history (hoping that Blogger will let me back-date the posts and display them in the proper sequence).

So without further fanfare I will announce that we are this evening parked at the Sam's Club in Pleasantville, NJ (just outside of Atlantic City). Every time we park in a Walmart or Sam's parking lot, Louise always tells me I take her to all the best places...

We're not here, by the way, to visit Atlantic City. In fact, other than the brief glimpse of the casinos in the distance that we caught on our way here, we don't intend to take in any of the nearby glitz. It just turned out to be where we were at dusk on our way south on US route 9. We are on the way to Cape May to catch the ferry to Delaware. Tomorrow we'll drive south along the New Jersey coast, and hope to catch a ferry somewhere around mid-day. I have my fingers crossed that we are far enough from NYC and DC that the post-Thanksgiving traffic will be a non-issue for us. In any case, I expect the ferry will have space available in the earlier part of the day. Stay tuned!